Inefficient, Human Traditions
She remembers her first Halloween. Not from her childhood but from the early days of what she considers her life. She did not participate, contemptuous of frivolity. Not contemptuous of tradition, of maintaining identity and ties to origins while far from home, of adults indulging—even creating—inanity for the young only because she was not yet perceptive enough to understand that much of what she observed. She watched the crew carve pumpkins in the mess hall, standing apart, hands behind her back.
Now she sits cross-legged on a drop cloth spread over the back porch, which is caught in that late autumn afternoon moment of sunny-not-sunny, when the softly swaying leaves of the nearby oaks cast their shade over the bleached boards, dark and light, light and dark, a moment out of time that can last for hours. She holds her pumpkin in the hollow of her lap; her head is bent over her work which is as painstaking as that of any master craftsman or artist has ever been. An array of knives is arranged neatly at her side, from the simple brutality of the carving knife to the delicate blade with which she can pare away a millimeter of orange skin at a time.
Her second Halloween she was convinced to participate. Reluctant, still half-disdainful but that mostly a façade to cover her insecurity. She attended the party. Tossed the rings and beanbags with unerring accuracy. Refused to bob for apples. Accepted the surreptitious handful of candy from the captain just in time to offer it to Naomi Wildman, following the most subtle of cues to adequately complete the ritual. She tagged obediently along as the captain judged the jack-o-lanterns and then slipped back to her quarters, Janeway shushing and laughing, like a child sneaking away from the adults to pull off a coup, as if the ship were not her own from the chair on the bridge to the most neglected Jefferies tube. For the moment giving in to that gleeful mischievous mood that so intrigued Seven, Janeway took Seven along to retrieve her own pumpkin, carved in private because she was the captain and only now, the judging done, revealed. Had anyone else been judge, Seven knew, Kathryn’s pumpkin would have been the clear victor.
This year Naomi Wildman is seven-years-old, growing more rapidly than a Human child physically and otherwise, trapped somehow in her hybrid heritage, neither Human nor Katarian, peerless among her peers, so that sometimes she is almost adolescent and, at others, seems even younger than her years.
There are other children now, but they are still too young to wield the knives or grasp the goal of the activity. Naomi is sprawled next to Seven, one arm up to the elbow in a huge pumpkin that is to be the crowning grace of the party.
On her third Halloween, she taught Azan and Rebi and Mezoti and even Icheb how to make art out of squash. She asked Janeway to help and that year the captain did not have to carve her pumpkin in solitude. The whole off-duty crew trick-or-treated up and down the corridors of five decks and Seven went along with Naomi and Samantha and Icheb and Mezoti and the twins. She even wore the feline ears Naomi had brought for her. And when they called at the captain’s quarters, she let Janeway talk her into donning the tail and replicating a black biosuit as well, for the party. She drew the line at whiskers but still Janeway laughed until she had to sit down.
Now Seven makes one more miniscule adjustment to her jack-o-lantern before raising her head and stretching her back reflexively under the weakly warm sun. She smiles over at Naomi, thinking that the child was lucky to have a traditionalist captain who knew about things like cutting designs into pumpkins—they all were. In all the dignity of her captaincy, Kathryn had given to Seven an impossible gift: a taste of childhood.
Now Seven turns the last pumpkin around for Naomi to approve.
The next year she had started early and carved all the landmasses and seas of Earth onto an unnaturally shaped pumpkin she’d replicated to scale. The captain kept it in a stasis field in her ready room for the entire Terran month. The day after Halloween Seven found that Janeway had moved it to her quarters after the party. It was perhaps the longest-lived jack-o-lantern in human history.
As Naomi claps her hands, there is a warmth at Seven’s back stronger than the weak October sun. She does not have to turn to know Janeway has dropped to her haunches behind her. Small hands rub lightly up her back, as if to sooth cramped muscles. Reflexively she turns her face, into the auburn hair, into the faint spiced scent—Kathryn’s favorite autumn bath oil lingering even now. It is not a kiss, just skin on skin, nose on jaw.
Then Naomi is turning the pumpkin for the captain and their laughter mingles, rising through the crisp air to rustle the dry leaves from their branches
Then they’d had the real thing. An Earth not of pumpkin but
rich
They had trick-or-treated door to door in the agricultural park where Kathryn Janeway herself first learned the rites, riding from house to house seated atop bales of hay in an open conveyance drawn by horses. The Janeways and Seven and Naomi and Sam. Tom and B’Elanna and Miral, who was still a babe in arms then, passed from lap to lap. Even Tuvok and T’Pel, who happened to be on Earth, and their youngest child came along, costumed like the rest. The ride home was quiet, every well-spaced house already visited, Miral asleep on Tom’s shoulder and Naomi cuddling against her mother. Even the adults were tired and silent after hours of jocularity, staring up at the stars as if they’d never seen them before. Janeway, also silent, held Seven’s hand and leaned against her.
Seven has carved Naomi’s face into the pumpkin flesh. All it needs is a candle inside to make depth and shadow come alive as in a portrait. But Kathryn is still the master of this art and she and Naomi have been colluding, Seven realizes, as Kathryn pulls the little girl to her feet and they dash off, laughing still, before Seven can rise. They are back in a moment and Kathryn is holding her own pumpkin, already lit from within.
In the darkling evening, Seven of Nine’s face glows against the darkness of Kathryn’s dress. Then four small hands begin to turn the pumpkin and scenes rotate into view one by one: Janeway and Seven on a cube, tinged green from Borg illumination (dye carefully applied to pumpkin flesh), Janeway and Seven with Voyager in relief behind them, Janeway and Seven in profile with Earth’s moon glowing behind their heads, the Sea of Tranquility just visible.
Kathryn hands the pumpkin off to Naomi and runs, Seven already in pursuit and not trying very hard to catch her. Not until they are out of the yard and into the fields. And this time they do kiss, Seven swallowing Kathryn’s laughter.
It is full dark now and soon the other guests will come, friends and neighbors, to what is already an annual event, one of the many. Kathryn Janeway will throw a party at the drop of a hat, but always there are the annual events, on all the major holidays she kept as a child and all the holidays they celebrated on Voyager.
They run like children, hand and hand, back to the house where Naomi and her mother have just lit the last of the jack-o-lanterns that dot the porches and the yard and line the front walk. More of their friends have already arrived, those who were close enough this year of those who will always be the crew of Voyager; they stand in small groups but they turn as one as Kathryn and Seven run out of the darkness. Immediately, Kathryn breathless with running and laughter, they are surrounded, enfolded safely within a jumbled circle of family.
Soon the other guests will arrive and Kathryn is not yet fully costumed. Seven herself still wears her pumpkin carving clothes. They break away, rush inside and upstairs, Kathryn’s breathlessness contagious, the whole farm awash in building anticipation, growing, growing, growing with the rising murmur of voices from below.
Seven catches Janeway on the stairs, holding her back, all that energy caught and held by a palm resting on an arm and sparking joyfully in Kathryn’s eyes.
They have talked about this, but without any immediacy, never before with this sudden depthless intensity. But this is the time and so there is no discussion. Seven knows and, as soon as she says so, Janeway knows too.
Five years later, they are back on regular ship duty, on a
deep space mission, no less, but Janeway gets them to